The Good Life
A Sermon by the
Rev. S. Randall Toms, Ph.D.
April 19, 2021
Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD. (Psalm 119:1)
Last time, as we began our study of this 119th psalm, we saw that the great theme of this portion of Holy Scripture is the word of God, the holy Scriptures. This psalm shows us over and over, from so many different angles, how precious and valuable the word of God is. The Psalmist will say things like “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Ps. 119:03). He will express the value of God’s word by saying, “Therefore I love thy commandments above gold; yea, above fine gold” (119:127). Is that the way you think of your Bible? Every time you pick it up, do you have the feeling that you are about to do something that would give you more pleasure than tasting the most delicious of foods? Do you feel that you are about to come into possession of something that will make you richer than finding a great fortune? The Psalmist thought that way about the Holy Scriptures. As we have seen, the reason the word of God is so precious is that it shows us the way to the blessed life, a life that is to be envied–a life that is happy in so many different ways.
Some people do not like to use the word “happy” when referring to the Christian life, since happiness seems to be such a fleeting emotion. Some prefer to say that Christians do not have happiness, rather, they have joy. But the word “blessed” that is used here does have the meaning of “happiness.” Some don’t like the word “happy” because the very root of the word “happy” is “hap,” which means “chance or “good fortune.” Happy people are just lucky. But what distinguishes Christian happiness from the happiness of the world is that the happiness of the Christian does not depend on the outward circumstances of life. Christian happiness, Christian blessedness endures, even when we are compelled to carry a cross.
As a matter of fact, the Christian way of blessedness–the Christian way of happiness–seems upside down to most people in the world. For Jesus, the happy were the poor in spirit, those who mourn, and those who are persecuted and reviled. As I mentioned last time, the King James Version often translates this word as “happy.” If we look at some of those places, we can see how the happiness of the Christian is described as so different from that of the world. In I Peter 3:14, the apostle writes, “But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy (same word as translated ‘blessed’ elsewhere) are ye: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled.” Everyone knows that suffering people are not happy, but in the Christian scheme of things, they are, even when faced with the terror of persecution that would bring so much trouble to the average person. Again, in I Peter 4:14, the apostle Peter writes, “If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy (same word again) are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you.” Though the outward trouble may bring much pain and sorrow, the Christian is happy because during such times God’s glory is manifested in their lives. In both the Old and New Testaments, the Scriptures teach that blessed life, the happy life, does not depend upon the outward circumstances of life that are usually associated with happiness.
At this point, I need to explain that we will never come to believe that the life described in the Scriptures is really the blessed life until the Holy Spirit gives us faith to see that these truths are so. As Thomas Manton put it, “That a poor godly man, who is counted the filth and the offscouring of all things, should be the only happy man, and that the great men of this world, who have all things at will, should be ‘poor, blind, miserable, and naked,’ is a paradox that will never enter into the heart of the natural man, that hath only the light of sense and carnal reason to judge of things, for to sight and reason it is nothing so.” It is a difficult thing to convince the people of this world that the Christian, who is very often poor, despised, and rejected, is living the blessed life. Everything that our culture teaches and believes is that the opposite is true. The world believes that it is the man living in the penthouse, indulging in carnal pleasures, who is living the good life. Unless the Holy Spirit has opened your eyes to see that there is no greater treasure than godliness and holiness of life, you will never believe it.
The Psalmist is teaching us how to live the blessed life, or as we might put it in our day, “how to live the good life.” My son-in-law and I have a little game we play that when I ask him how he is doing, or he asks me how I am doing, the other one will usually say, “Oh, you know, just living the dream.” In reality, all human beings want to “live the dream.” There is nothing wrong with this desire. God created human beings to live the blessed life. Philosophy itself often tried to answer the questions, “What is the good life, and how do we attain the good life?” Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and the Stoics, all tried to answer the question, “What is the highest good, and how do we attain it?” Though we may not get as technical as the brilliant philosophers, when we speak of “the good life,” I think most of us mean a life that is as happy as possible–one that that contains as little sorrow as possible. How many times do parents say to their children, “All I want is for you to be happy?” To quote Thomas Manton again, “Good, good is the cry of the world…for everything that is desired is desired as good. Well then, out of a principle of self-love, all would be happy; they would have good and they would have it for ever…all men hunt about for contentment and satisfaction.” I think that when we talk about the good life, we are describing a life that is filled with happiness, contentment, and satisfaction.
But here is the rub. How is that life to be attained? How do we achieve this life of blessedness–a life that is so good that we would be envied, congratulated? Is the good life one filled with as much pleasure as possible? Is the good life accumulating as many possessions as we can collect? Is the good life avoiding as much pain as possible? Is the good life the endless pursuit of knowledge? When I was growing up, I think we were persuaded to believe that the good life could be symbolized by a James Bond-type character, martini in hand and sitting by a roaring a fire with a beautiful woman at his side. There it is–the good life! Unfortunately, because sin has corrupted our hearts and minds, we do not even know what the good life is, and if we do not even know what the good life is, we certainly do not have a clue about how to attain it. Since we seek the good life in the wrong things and in the wrong way, the good life keeps receding from our grasp the more we run and lunge toward it.
But the Scriptures do teach us what the good life is and how we can live the good life. The good life can be ours, but the only way it can be attained is in the way that God has prescribed. Unfortunately, since we are sinners, we do not approve of God’s way to the good life, and we try to invent our own. If we try to attain the good life in any other way than the way prescribed by God, the result will be exactly the opposite of the blessed life. Instead of happiness, we will experience sorrow. Instead of contentment, there will be constant worry. Instead of satisfaction, we will experience perpetual disappointment and disillusionment. When we make anything in this world the chief delight of our souls, we find that those very things become a source of misery and pain to us. Look at the person who sought his pleasure in drugs and alcohol. Look at those who have ruined their bodies and destroyed their families because they could not say “no” to their sexual appetites. Look at those who have given themselves to fortune and fame and wound up suicides when they lost it all. Look at those who lived to gain political power and now live in constant fear of losing it and destroy so many lives in an attempt to keep it. All those who have believed that joy and peace were found in those things have found out that their lives are filled with everything except joy and peace. The apostle Paul warned in I Timothy 6:7-10: “For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.” Notice how the Apostle talks about those who make the pursuit of money their primary objective. He says that they fall into lusts, but not just lusts–hurtful lusts. In a society which encourages lust, craving, and that all happiness and satisfaction is found in fulfilling our desires, what we find is that, in the end, these desires and cravings are hurtful, harmful. You see how God is concerned with our welfare. Those lusts lead us away from the good life. Notice how Paul says that this life of pursuing money and possessions–a life motivated by covetousness–pierces us through with many sorrows. The Lord is warning us that no matter how much that kind of life is envied and praised, the end of it is to be pierced with sorrow. How many examples of that tragedy do we see every day in the lives of the rich and famous? No wonder that St. Paul tells Timothy to flee from that life of lust and covetousness, and instead, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, and meekness. Those virtues do not pierce us through with sorrows. Actually, in those words, the apostle Paul has summed up the blessed life, the good life. The good life is righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, and meekness. As we study the 119 Psalm, we will learn that only way we can live that life is through studying and obeying the word of God.
Since we often think that the good life is found in the things of this world–pleasures, power, fame, and possessions–we find that these things cannot satisfy the hunger and longing of the human heart. The whole book of Ecclesiastes is devoted to that subject. Only God himself can satisfy the hunger of the heart, for human beings were created to glorify and enjoy him forever. As Thomas Manton says, “God is very jealous of what we make our happiness, and therefore blasteth the carnal choice.” In other words, if you choose to make your happiness anything other than God Himself, he will crush the choice you have made. Remember that the Lord said, “For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” God created us to worship him–to find our chief satisfaction in him. If we seek to find our satisfaction in anything other than him, we are sure to be disappointed, for that would be the sin of idolatry, which is the greatest of sins, and the cause of all other sins. If God should bless us with material things, we accept them thankfully and gladly as blessings from his hand, and for the person who loves the Lord, the material blessings of God sweeten our lives. But if we make those things the focus of our lives, those things will become a curse to us, for we will have placed our chief affections upon things that cannot last. Apart from a relationship with God, those very things come to be empty.
In Isaiah 55:2, the Lord asks, “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.” There could be no better question to ask our American culture that this: “Why are you working so hard to buy those things which will never be able to satisfy you?” Those things that you obtain, may please you for a while, but in the end, they become dull and boring. Ultimately, those things get old, and so people must turn to something else, and what they frequently turn to is evil as a source of pleasure and entertainment. All the sexual perversity that we see in our culture now is actually the result of boredom. Tired of normal sexual practices, they must experiment with something new, but like an addiction to drugs, it takes a new thrill, a new experience to satisfy. I hate to think of what this country will look like in another 50 years when even the perversities that men and women practice now will no longer satisfy. What will they turn to next? Since our culture has made entertainment its god, there will come a time when every single of one of our sources of entertainment will become boring. What will we turn to eventually to satisfy our need for entertainment? Will it be something like an arena of gladiators where only the spilling of blood is enough to amuse us? I think we are pretty close to that point even at the present time.
No matter what human beings turn to for satisfaction, in the end they will never be content, because human beings were made for more noble things. Jesus said, “Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you” (John 6:27). You were made for eternal life, and eternal life is simply communion with God through Jesus Christ. It is for this reason that the great philosophers never could accurately describe the good life, because none of their answers led to knowing God through Jesus Christ. As St. Paul writes, “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” (I Cor. 1:21). Paul was familiar with the attempts of the great Greek philosophers to attain wisdom–to try to explain things like the good life. But philosophers could not find the answer to these questions, because their wisdom never led to the knowledge of God. Paul says that this true wisdom could only be attained by the message he preached—the gospel. So, we are back to the word of God again. Only the word of God can lead us to the good life, because the good life is found only in a relationship with God, and that relationship is only possible through Jesus Christ. It is through the word of God, the holy Scriptures, that we learn what that life is, how it is attained, and how to nourish and enjoy it. Matthew Henry writes,
If you hearken to Christ, you eat that which is good, which is both wholesome and pleasant, good in itself and good for you. God’s good word and promises, a good conscience, and the comforts of God’s good Spirit, are a continual feast to those that hearken diligently and obediently to Christ. Their souls shall delight themselves in fatness, that is, in the riches and most grateful delights…come and entertain yourselves with that which will be abundantly pleasing; eat, O friends!
This continual feast, this constant satisfaction described by Matthew Henry, is found in the study of the word of God, for it is the study of the word of God that reveals to us who God is and how we can enter into communion with him through Jesus Christ, who by the power of the Holy Spirit will enable us walk in obedience to him.
The wonderful thing about a detailed study of the 119th Psalm is that it will drive you to Christ to plead for forgiveness, and it will lead you to pray for the wisdom of the Holy Spirit to help you understand the Scriptures and to give you power to be able to live in obedience to that word which he has written himself. We love the, the Holy Scriptures because it is this book that reveals Christ. It is only by believing in him, surrendering our wills to him, that we can live the blessed life. We think that this book is designed only to show us how to go to Heaven when we die, and it does do that. But this book is so much more. This book is also designed to show us how to live the good life in this present world. We end each Morning and Evening prayer service by asking God to grant us “in this world, knowledge of thy truth.” How are we to come to know the truth in this world? We can find that knowledge only in the Scriptures.
In the 119th Psalm, the psalmist offers us a description of the good life, the blessed life. Everyone is seeking the good life–they always have, and they always will. The Psalmist said in Psalm 4:6, “There be many that say, Who will shew us any good?” Commenting on this verse, Charles Simeon, the great Anglican preacher wrote,
From infancy to youth, from youth to manhood, from manhood to old age, the inquiry is continued, Who will shew us any good? who will shew us any thing wherein our minds may repose, and find the largest measure of satisfaction? Agreeably to this universal sentiment, all prosecute the same object, in the ways wherein they think themselves most likely to attain it. The merchant seeks it in his business, and hopes that in due time he shall find it in the acquisition of wealth. The soldier looks for it in the dangers and fatigues of war, and trusts that he shall find it in the laurels of victory, the acquisition of rank, and the applause of men. The traveller searches for it in foreign climes, in expectation that he shall possess it in an expansion of mind, and in those elegant acquirements, which shall render him the admiration of the circle in which he moves. The statesman conceives he shall find it in the possession of power, the exertion of influence, and the success of his plans. The philosopher imagines that it must surely be found in his diversified and laborious researches; whilst the devotee follows after it with confidence in cloistered seclusion, in religious contemplation, and in the observance of ceremonies of man’s invention. Others pursue a widely different course. The voluptuary follows after his object in a way of sensual gratification, and in the unrestrained indulgence of all his appetites. The gamester affects rather the excitement of his feelings in another way; and hopes, that, in the exultation arising from successful hazard, and from sudden gain, he shall enjoy the happiness which his soul panteth after. The miser, on the other hand, will neither risk, nor spend more than he can avoid; but seeks his good in an accumulation of riches, and a conceit that he possesses what shall abundantly suffice for the supply of all his future wants. We might pursue the subject through all the different departments of life; but sufficient has been said to shew, that all are inquiring after good.
In other words, everyone is searching after blessedness, but most are searching for it in ways that will bring only disappointment and ruin. This 119th Psalm tells us how to live this blessed life. Do you want to live the blessed life? The Psalmist shows us how. Again, I will repeat something I will say over and over throughout our study of this passage: “If you would have the good life–study the word of God, believe the word of God, love the word of God, and live the word of God.” This is the only path to blessedness. Amen.
